I have decided to take early retirement in September 2020. During the many years online I have received wonderful feedback from many readers, researchers and students interested in human embryology. I especially thank my research collaborators and contributors to the site. The good news is Embryology will remain online and I will continue my association with UNSW Australia. I look forward to updating and including the many exciting new discoveries in Embryology!

1987 Introduction to the Journal

The zoological literature of this country is found in the various publications of the Smithsonian Institution, in voluminous reports of government commissions, in the memoirs and proceedings of societies and academies, in the bulletins and memoirs of a few universities, and in numerous periodicals devoted to the natural sciences.

With such varied ways and means of publication what more can be required? The answer must be brief: diversity in these respects is not an evidence of efficiency, but of weakness. Concentration is our need. How shall we effect it? Can any one or more of our present media of publication be converted into a strong central organ, devoted exclusively to the presentation of original research in animal morphology? Unfortunately no one of them appears to be capable of undergoing such a radical metamorphosis. Every attempt in this direction has failed, and for reasons too obvious to require notice here; and every combination scheme has found an effectual barrier in the rivalries of different institutions.

Our scientific publications are miscellanies, and such they are destined to remain. No one of them can make any pretension to fulfilling the functions of a morphological journal. Nowhere in this entire country is there a single efficient serial publication offering to extend its privileges to zoologists in general, without regard to local restrictions. The result is that valuable papers have been shelved for years ; some have been published with illustrations of an inferior quality ; and not a few have been brought to the light through the aid of foreign journals.

Much, then, as we owe to our scientific societies for what they have done and are still doing for the biological sciences, and earnestly as we may desire to sustain and strengthen their resources, we recognize needs which such organizations have never undertaken to supply.

Our system of publication, even if it were not limited in means and burdened with local restrictions, would still sufifer from defects of method that admit of no remedy. The inaccessibility of our literature — scattered as it is among the publications of so many societies and institutions, and mixed up with a mass of heterogeneous matter that has no value for a zoologist — is notorious. The mixed character and scattered sources of our publications are twin evils that have become intolerable both at home and abroad. The establishment of the Journal of Morphology may not be the deathblow to these evils ; but there is hope that it will, at least, relieve the more embarrassing difficulties of the present situation.

It is unnecessary to expatiate on the advantages offered by such a medium of publication. They have long been acknowledged, appreciated, and enjoyed by those who have occupied themselves with the biological sciences in other countries. Germany, France, England, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland have their morphological journals ; and the number supported in each country may be taken as an index of its productivity in morphological research.

We have not hitherto followed the example of other nations in this particular ; but we venture to say that the time has come when at least one morphological journal should and can be creditably maintained. Our confidence is based on the fact that we now have several flourishing morphological laboratories established in this country; on the hearty assurances of support given by those who represent the principal centres of research in the United States and Canada ; and on the character and number of the contributions offered for the first volume.

As previously announced, the JOURNAL OF MORPHOLOGY will be devoted principally to embryological, anatomical, and histological subjects. Although limited in a general way to animal morphology, it has not been thought necessary to make this fact prominent in the title.

The Journal will be issued in numbers, each containing from one hundred and fifty to two hundred or more pages, and from eight to ten lithographic plates. The second number, completing the first volume, will appear in November.

It is hardly practicable, and perhaps it is not desirable, to have stated times of publication. It is more important to provide for the early appearance of papers than for regularity in issue ; and accordingly the plan has been adopted of publishing numbers as often as the requisite material is furnished.

A partial compensation for the unavoidable delays that have attended the vssue of the first number will be found in the fact that it has been made much larger, and more expensive in illustration, than was promised in the original announcement.

G. Carl Huber. The development of the albino rat, Mus norvegicus albinus. I. From the pronuclear stage to the stage of mesoderm anlage; end of the first to the end of the ninth day. Thirty-two figures 247